We had a great weekend.

Saturday morning, on our way to the library, we stopped at Hill Pleasant Farm to pick up some fresh tomatoes.

They did have tomatoes. And cucumbers the size of my forearm. And Penny begged for a watermelon. And they had an unbelievable deal on supersweet corn -- it was bagged by the baker's dozen, $3 a bag... buy one bag, get one free.

There are worse things to splurge on than fresh fruits and vegetables.

Of course, when we got home and started shucking the corn for lunch, it became obvious why it was on sale -- these were the culls that had worms in them. But most of them were only eaten up at the tip, so I didn't have to cut away more than about 20% of each cob, and the rest... Well, supersweet corn is mighty good eating.

Matt and I had corn for lunch and dinner Saturday, and then we took the rest of it to my parents' on Sunday to eat with Penny's birthday dinner.

After Penny'd had her nap, we went down to the mall to pick up a new sheet for our bed. It was the first time Matt and I had been to the mall in probably a year or more. The rennovations look very nice, now that they're all done, we had to admit.

As a treat for being (mostly) good while we were shopping for sheets, we took Penny to the Dairy Queen at the mall food court for her afternoon snack. She couldn't have been more excited. "I get ice cream! With choc'ate on it!" Matt even let her carry it all by herself to our table (mostly because he couldn't carry three ice creams and hold her hand, and I was holding the table).

I made the mistake of telling Penny on Sunday morning that we were going to a little birthday party on Sunday at Grandma and Grandpa's. She spent pretty much the rest of the day asking for cake and ice cream.

She did seem to like her present from my parents, though, which was a kid-sized shopping cart and more play-food than you could shake a stick at.

Mom had set up all the food out on their porch like a tiny little grocery store. I have this suspicion that she just wanted to play with it herself.

But that didn't distract Penny from her primary purpose, which was cake and ice cream. Mom hadn't gotten her a cake, which led to this conversation:

"Gwamma, I want ice cream an' cake."

"I don't have any cake, sugar."

"I want ice cream."

There wasn't even a pause to process. Matt and my dad and I almost fell off our chairs laughing.

Finally! Time for dessert!

And in lieu of birthday cake, Mom stuck three candles in Penny's ice cream. Penny knew exactly what to do, and didn't even need help to blow them out.

And we even got her home early enough for a bath at her usual time. Which was good, because she'd had chocolate ice cream and chocolate syrup and watermelon and corn and butter and more ice cream smeared all over her hands and face and into her hair all weekend, and was in desperate need of that bath.

And that's the sign of a good weekend, if anything is, right?

--Liz